Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Apps: Here is the Love?


Most of my iPhone apps (I have too many) transferred over to the iPad when I synched the iPad through iTunes.

Most of my iPhone apps (I have too many to say this as a blanket statement) are usable on the iPad, but they're simply little apps on a bigger screen. That is, rather than a story from the New York Times filling the iPhone screen, the story is iPhone size on the iPad screen, with lots of black screen around it. Not attractive. I can zoom out that image so that it fills the iPad screen (there's a sizer in the lower right corner of the iPad screen), but then it's like reading something with drugstore reading glasses of the wrong magnification.

So playing with iPhone apps on the iPad is not the way to iPad love. Time to download iPad-specific apps.

First question: can I get rid of the iPhone apps on my iPad without getting rid of these apps altogether? That is, how do I keep them synched from iTunes:iPhone but not iTunes:iPad?

I'll delete some from the iPad and see what happens. (Side note: love the instructions that came up on the iPad screen initially re how to arrange icons: "To rearrange icons, touch and hold any icon until it starts to wiggle"! Love the 'wiggle.'

Second question: what apps are worth having on the iPad?

I got iBooks yesterday, and Winnie the Pooh is already on the shelf, and it's beautiful. I was tickled to read Winnie the Pooh to myself on the iPad. I heart Winnie the Pooh. (But am I going to read WtP from my iPad to a child snugged in bed or on my lap? Probably not -- though I can see where if I could get said child situated in bed then it would be easier to read this in the darkened room than reading a traditional book in a darkened room. But the iPad is heavier and harder than a book, and if you put your finger in the wrong spot the page turns willynilly!)

I've downloaded Middlemarch for meatier reading, and a free sample of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day to see how recipes look on this screen. It is rreealllly smart of the Apple folks to show all the empty library shelves in the iBooks app: I want to fill them all!

I'll get the NYTimes Editors Choice app and NPR and a few others and try them out. And I'll shop the iPad app store to see if something jumps out as particularly fun for this size of a gadget.

I suspect some of my iPhone attachment and its related fun factor is based on the kick of having so much power/potential within the little framework of the iPhone.

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LATER: OK, this is a very difficult relationship.

I wanted to include a photo here of me holding Padma, with Pooh on the screen. Took the photo with my iPhone and emailed it to myself, opened that email on the iPad, saved the image to the iPad (there's a little loopy arrow in the right corner of the Exchange mail message that lets you choose reply/forward/save image: I selected 'save image' and it saved to the Photos 'app,' which, yes, took me a few tries to figure out where it was going).

OK, so now I have a photo on my iPad, I've got Blogger open on my iPad (through Safari), and I try to add this image. But the "Add an image from your computer" instruction doesn't give me the open dialogue box to select an image from the iPad. There's a 'Choose File' button, but pushing that (since there is no open box to find the files through) just leads to creating more "Choose File" button. They're procreating like rabbits. I have to stop pushing that button; it's getting me nowhere.

So no fun yet, no love yet, still working on this.

1 comment:

  1. So here's what I've learned:

    1) Synching the iPad with iTunes/iPhone was probably dumb. I'm going to delete most of the apps on the iPad and stop synching. (I think.)

    2) To get photos on the iPad, I emailed some from the iPhone to myself, then saved the images from the email I read on iPad. I can use those images as wallpaper.

    ReplyDelete